Stanford Social Innovation Review Podcast

The Disaster Management Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is helping incident responders learn to use social media. In this one-on-one interview conducted at Stanford University, host Karl Matzke and Jeannie Stamberger discuss how to write retweetable messages, how to separate legitimate helpers from posers and how to use social media to prevent loss of life. In one example, the World Bank used teens with cell phones to create GPS-linked maps identifying structures vulnerable to collapse in earthquake-prone areas. In another, during a recent evacuation drill at Stanford University, Stamberger reported that tweets provided useful information that would have taken exhaustive testing to uncover. In the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, the Google people-finder application helped connect lost quake victims to the friends and relatives who were looking for them. In another case, Ushahidi encouraged the use of Twitter hashtags #haiti or #haitiquake to report security threats, health emergencies and